DayZ stand alone is the long awaited game based on the Mod that shot ARMA2, a niche hardcore milsim, to the top of steam sales. Dropped near naked on the coast, you’re only goal is to survive – both against zombies, thirst, starvation, the elements and of course the most dangerous threat of all; other players.

Currently in an alpha state selling for $30 on steam. The game is at best in an embryonic state, stable but riddled with bugs and half-finished content. That hasn’t stopped it from being the #1 seller on steam over the Christmas sales, even with the warnings that the game is incomplete.

So, is it any good?

Probably. If you’re a masochist who can handle the brutal cutthroat gameplay then you’ll enjoy playing solo. If you like playing with people, band up with some friends and go around making your own fun – I’ve seen bands of bandits, police, clown mask wearing axe murders and my personal favourite, a team of “medical scientists” who will hold you up, cuff you “for your own safety” before advising that you are delusional and zombies are not real prior to assessing if you’re fit to be released or euthanized. Of course it’s nowhere near complete and also very buggy right now, the most sadistic being the goddamn bunny rabbits – they’re audio is mixed up with the zombies and I’ve damn near pissed myself at least twice.

Good news is that patches have been coming out on a near daily basis (ignoring the Christmas/New Year break) – each day results in more bug fixes and content, but it’s still pretty bare bones at the moment.

Compared to the mod, the game is far better looking and much more polished – with reworked inventory systems, server architecture and hack protection. But it’s lacking in content, there are only four firearms currently in the game to date, no vehicles, half the misc. items are junk without purpose (hell, there are shotgun shells but no shotguns) and the zombies numbers are so low you can almost forget they exist at times – hiding from them is a waste of time and killing them is an afterthought. As time goes on their numbers will be amped up, right now they walk through walls which balances out their low numbers, but stability is the goal so most towns only have a handful.

Thing is, humans have a tendency to band together in times of adversity – we become more generous, more willing to trust others and share… But when times are good, that’s when people want to hang onto what they got – we get greedy, we get paranoid, we don’t trust anyone we don’t know.

Given the weak state of zombies, the abundance of food/water and other loot there really isn’t any serious threat. So what happens when you put a bunch of humans in an environment without much in the way of external threats or pressures that will force them band together to survive?

Lord of the Flies, with an extra dose of the strange, sadistic and hilarious.

It doesn’t matter that the majority of people are good on any given day, when two survivalists bump into each other odds are one will kill the other to keep what they have rather than risk losing it all – It also doesn’t help that you’ve got psychopaths who go out of their way to murder people, walking into any of the major settlements or airfields is playing sniper roulette. Player interactions are tense at the best of times – I’ve been shot at or outright murdered once for every person I’ve encountered, said hi, then slowly backed away from (and maybe even shot in the back).

But it’s the player interaction where this game really shines.

I have been handcuffed and robbed and have handcuffed and robbed in turn. I have had blood stolen from me before being force fed rotten fruit and chemical disinfectant. I have chased people down and bashed them to death with a fire extinguisher while singing nursery rhymes over the voice chat. I have encountered two evangelical Christians who held me at gunpoint and then executed me when I refused to accept Jesus into my heart. I have poisoned fresh fruit and left it in a house. I’ve been robbed by a man for my runners - I shot him in the back five minutes later and checked his backpack, shoes shoes and more shoes.

It’s some of the most fun I’ve had in ages.

Last edited by Rougey on Thu Jan 09, 2014 2:10 pm, edited 4 times in total.

Playing with people is better, safety in numbers and all that, but you can solo it pretty easily. Being a survivalist is nerve wreaking but rewarding , I've survived quite a few attempted murders and my record is about five days (2-4 hours each day) of survival before I joined up with a mate and got murdered by a sniper at the north west airfield - nothing he could have done sadly, was killed by a server jumping combat logger (upcoming patch is due to address this issue).

Like I said in the OP, right now players are your biggest threat. Recently I've taken to walking around naked singing nursery rhymes and trying to provoke fights.

Combat logging (logging off when being attacked so you can't be killed)

Yeah, this has been giving me the shits more than anything else. When my mate got murdered a couple of days ago, I put a few rounds into his killer but the fucker logged off - couple of minuets later he logs back on and has a crack at me, does some damage but fails to kill then logs again. I was also killed by a server hopper at the north western airfield, he was up in one of the lookout towers - popped me and logged out before my mates could pop him.

most important to me for doing ASAP is implementing the server queuing system to solve combat-logging and loot farming. It's pretty close to done, but it's not going to be until I'm back in CZ which is mid January.

* * *

Bikes, cars, buses, helicopters... made it way more interesting to get around the world...

I'm hoping we at least get bikes before the end of the month, more likely than not I'm going to have to take a break so I don't burn out - walking is a bastard.

Played a good 30hrs or so of Rust (its like the hungergames of survival games, base building, resource harvesting, raiding etc) has a much smaller map, like 8x8km of viable pve/pvp area, goes much further but its empty of towns/resources so you only go out there to sleep/secretbase....ill make a thread eventually.........relevant because....its the same genre

started dayz last night, hadnt played the mod version since captain nazi scorch/azurasarah like 2 years ago

god i am hopeless with establishing where i am initially, but once i know where i am, i can home in on a place like a fuckin carrier pidgeon cross country style

Movement is clumsy as fuck, rust>dayz for movement, inventory and combat - dayz>rust for content and actually feeling survivor style, being so clumsy in combat makes it seem a bit less cod-like.

Thing i fuckin hated was the combat loggers, you either try to heist them or simply have a extended firefight and they just logoff....fuckin boring as aids, cant wait for a 30sec-2min delayed logoff for the char,

Rust has sleepers, in that when you logoff, your guy takes a dirtnap and is free to get murdered and looted unless you are hidden/secure/guarded

3 of us went heisting, found a house and could see a guy inside, so we popped a C4 on the side and blew it, heard the most asian voice ever start screaming 'ME FRIENDLY ME FRIENDLY DONT KILL ME' so we demanded he come outside, so i covered him with my M4 while my 2 buddies looted his house and the whole time im just saying dont move and you'll be fine

We found a huge huge base, and scaled to the roof using our own wood gear and jumping across, found a wood door (odd as you can break them with melee, takes like 50 hits tho but easily doable and C4 is hard to farm) so my buddy starts hatcheting while we go look about the rooftop for other entrances...suddenly just hear a shot and my buddy is like FUCK, naked guy had popped open the door, headshotted him with one of the pipeshotguns and closed the door again.
Obviously we were a bit annoyed, so called him a cunt via ingame voice, C4'd the door and we destroyed him + his sleeping companion, netted 1500+ metal fragments which is a freakin lot (considering you might get like 50 metal dropped off a zombie or need to smelt it yourself from metal ore)

Yet to try completely surrounding someones base with my own base, would need to find someone logged off and asleep to have enough time to construct it